28/11/2024 - Luis “Soto” Muñoz proves himself to be one of Spain's most promising and unique directors with a moving film about the past and memory

In our minds, villages are a place we can return to because, in a way, we are still children there. Antonio evokes his childhood in a small village in Cordoba and his mind takes him back to the Easter celebrations. Back to the hands of the women weaving the days with their tasks, to the traditions and craftsmanship that make up the identity of a place as unique as Andalusia. But Antonio especially remembers Paco (the artist Paco Ariza born in Baena, the village where the film is set), an elderly painter who will teach the boy not only to paint, but also to observe life as a passing place and tries to calm the boy's concerns about religion and death. This is the story told in The Trail Left by Time [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the second film by Luis “Soto” Muñoz (director of Sueños y pan [+see also:
film review
film profile]), co-directed with Alfredo Picazo, after being presented at the 2023 Gijon Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film in the Tierres en trance Section, and at the last Seville Film Festival, in the Andalusian Panorama Section. It opens in Spanish cinemas on 29 November with Les Films de la Résistance.

The Trail Left by Time is a film somewhere between non-fiction and fiction where its protagonist, in what seems to be his last breath, recalls an Easter from his childhood in the village where he grew up; seven days that turned him into the adult he is now. The idiosyncrasy of a place, the meaning of its customs and beliefs, its ways of living and celebrating life and death, the relationship between individual and collective memory, the inevitable transience of everything that inhabits us. All this is told with stunning sensitivity, with a poetic realism that recalls the most lyrical and folkloric Carlos Saura. This film boasts an intimate tone that dwells on the strength of the images, that lets them and the music (a powerful soundtrack) do the talking.

Precisely therein lies one of the film's greatest virtues. In its ability to express what is not said through the powerful visual imagery that its directors manage to create through the images of Easter, the landscapes, the objects and the faces, their colours (much of it is shot in black and white) and textures. Also, in how the whole world is captured through the eyes of a child. An innocent, beautiful, curious look, that also conveys a certain melancholy and fear, and which contrasts with the voiceover of the adult who is now saying goodbye to life, evoking the past that was. It is those eyes from which the child observes the little things that make up his environment and his days and which draw us into his intimacy that manage to move us deeply, leaving us with some images to remember.

“Miguel Hernández said that the hand is the tool of the soul,” says the adult's voice-over. The hands that run through the film, that, cleaning, weaving, kneading bread, preparing food, painting, touching other hands, speak of a people and their origins. The Trail Left by Time is the confirmation of a promising director, a film against the grain, full of tenderness and emotion, a beautiful homage to the past that lies in the memory.

The Trail Left by Time is produced by the companies Mubox Studio and Du Cardelin Studio. Les Films de la Résistance also manages it international sales.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)